


reroute

by kosy



Category: Archive 81 (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Arguments, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Relationship Study Adjacent, Road Trips, Stream of Consciousness, and then marc subtweeted about it insulting it so i have changed it HBKLGHSKLG, assumes that left of the dial took place over a relatively long period of time, eldritch bullshit, title was "ways of getting from here to there"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25697875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy
Summary: There are infinite constellations shining over the Blacktop, but none that Static Man recognizes.
Relationships: Static Man/Nicholas Waters
Comments: 31
Kudos: 80





	reroute

**Author's Note:**

> no i have not gotten over left of the dial thank you for asking <3

_ US Route 66, the Mother Road _

Time follows road trip rules out here on the Blacktop. Which makes sense, he supposes, considering everything else about the Blacktop. 

Sometimes the hours drag out molasses-slow. Static Man spends little eternities staring out the window listening to the radio murmur its litany of doomsday prophecies and watches the sun not move even a fraction of a fraction of an inch. Nicholas is, of course, unconcerned. He’s an absolutely dogshit driver, but as much as he gets distracted by ranting at Static Man or gazing at some dust devil on the side of the road or tracking the patterns the heat waves form above the pavement or the ever-receding horizon, he never takes his eyes off the road to stare at the unmoving sun. It feels apocalyptic. It feels endless. 

Sometimes, though, time passes in impossible blinks. High noon one second and dizzyingly black midnight the next. No transitory period, no in-between. No sunset. There are infinite constellations shining over the Blacktop, but none that he recognizes. If there was a North star up there somewhere, maybe he wouldn’t feel so inescapably lost. 

There’s always a heartbeat after the time-jumps where Static Man is stomach-droppingly  _ certain _ that somehow the recorder has been turned off, that he’s lost more uncountable minutes, days, years to unreality, to his own nonexistence. That the ritual is ruined and they are ruined too. 

It never has turned off, of course. He looks over at Nicholas, whose fingers are tight around the throat of the wheel, watches him blink as his eyes adjust to the darkness. Nicholas looks back at him, just for a moment, and flicks on the headlights. 

“We’re getting closer,” he says, and Static Man chooses to trust him. 

_ US I-95, the longest American interstate _

Static Man used to romanticize the hell out of road trips to nowhere in particular. Something about driving aimlessly with someone you like a lot, comfortable in the knowledge that you are doing this only to pass time together. 

Now, as they pull into the parking lot of yet another identical chain hotel in yet another identical heartland ghost town scraped raw and empty by big business and the interstate running through it, arterial, the idea kind of makes him want to scream. 

“Dude, this is kind of depressing,” Static Man says. If he had an arm, he’d gesture to the empty streets and buzzing streetlamps, the movie-perfect 50’s diners and drive-thrus and drive-ins. There are no real houses on the Blacktop. Certainly nothing that could be called a home. It isn’t a place meant for staying. 

“Yes, well,” Nicholas says testily. “It wasn’t created to be anything else.” He gets the car in park, puts on the emergency brake—goddamn square, it’s not like the car’s gonna roll away on this perfect plateau—and gets out, opens the trunk to rummage through for his suitcase. 

“Sure, but like, what the hell was it created to be, then?” he complains, mostly just to cause problems. He likes bickering with Nicholas, at least most of the time.

Nicholas raises an eyebrow at him, hauling the luggage out. “I don’t know. That’s a pretty existential question, Static Man.” 

“Oh, Jesus, dude, I don’t know if I can deal with your Philosophy 101 shit right now.” 

“Well, you were the one who brought it up,” he grumbles, dragging the suitcase toward the entrance to the motel. He’s got the recorder clutched under one arm, some kind of weird eldritch road map he insists on being the only one to see under the other, and he’s still trying to use his cane. 

“Do you want me to grab something for you?” Static Man asks, floating closer, and Nicholas glares at him. “What? Dude, you’re the one who made me your fuckin’ eldritch butler or whatever.” 

“I’m  _ fine,” _ Nicholas growls, and Static Man backs off. 

“Suit yourself, man,” he mutters. “Just trying to help.” Nicholas levels another glare at him, stuffs the map under the arm with the tape recorder, and starts walking. 

As expected, the Clerk is waiting behind the reception desk, looking wholly unimpressed. “Welcome to Moody’s Family-Friendly Motel and Rest Stop, where we promise to treat you like the family we never had. Would you two hepcats like to rent a room for the night?” 

“Do you have to do the monologue every time?” Nicholas asks. 

“‘Cause I think we’ve kind of got the idea by now,” Static Man adds. 

“Yes.” The Clerk does not further explain.

“Oooooohkay,” Nicholas says after a moment. 

Static Man can feel himself grinning at the Clerk with all his teeth. “Cool. Lookin’ forward to the next one then, dude.” He misses doing finger guns. He misses doing finger guns  _ so much. _

He could be imagining it, he’s  _ probably _ imagining it, but he thinks he catches her smile back, just a tiny curl up at one side of her mouth. 

Later, as he’s bragging to Nicholas while he brushes his normal single set of human teeth—”Yo, dude, the Clerk actually smiled at me earlier. She totally likes me. Or, you know, doesn’t hate me,”—he catches the slight draw of Nicholas’ brow, the tenseness in his neck. “You good?” 

He spits out his toothpaste, mutters, “Yes. I’m alright, Static Man.” 

“Nick—” 

“Nicholas,” he corrects, but there’s no bite to it. He just sounds tired.

“Seriously, man—”

“I’m alright,” Nicholas interrupts. “Just leave it, okay?” 

“You gonna fucking command me to shut up? Is that it?” 

“We don’t have to go there,” Nicholas says, brushing past him on the way out of the bathroom. Static Man turns and follows him, watches him drop his cane on the ground with a carpet-muffled thud and flop down on the shitty little motel bed. 

“Dude, I’m asking you as a friend.”

“Arthur—” 

“No, nope, if you want me to fucking call you Nicholas you’re gonna have to fucking call me Static Man,” he snaps. “It’s a goddamned two way street, dude.” 

“Static Man,” he amends, then rubs at his eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s… getting to me. The Blacktop. Which isn’t an excuse, I know, but...” 

“You want me to drive tomorrow?” he asks. Tries for a tone resembling gentle. It’s been a while since he’s gotten it right. He’s out of practice with things that don’t involve reducing living things to viscera. 

“No,” Nicholas says immediately. “No, it has to be me.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes.” He pauses. “Also, you don’t exactly have a corporeal body with which to drive.” 

“That is sort of why we’re here,” Static Man agrees. “I’d make it work, though. Redirect some sets of teeth down to the brakes and the gas pedal.” 

Nicholas smiles wearily. “Thank you.” Another pause, this one heavy. Nicholas just looks at him, eyes wide and dark and hungry in a way Static Man isn’t totally sure he knows how to deal with. 

It occurs to him that Nicholas must be a horribly, horribly lonely man. 

“Sure, man,” he says, lost. “Anytime.” 

Static Man watches him sleep that night. Feels kind of weird about it, but Static Man doesn’t really sleep, and what else is he going to do? Leave? Disappear back into nonexistence? 

Nicholas looks so small like this, all the fight and snark and pretentious academia gone from him. He becomes just a man, just a guy, scrawny and exhausted and awkward and barely scraping through. It’s easier when Static Man doesn’t let himself remember that. 

_ Nowhere in Particular  _

Every once in a while, Nicholas pulls the car over to the side of the road to stretch his legs; the damaged one tends to cramp even worse than normal when it’s stuck in the same position for too long. Static Man doesn’t mind. Variety is the fuckin’ spice of life or whatever, even if that variety just means a different kind of wasteland to look at. He thinks it can be beautiful. He wants it to be beautiful. 

(Nicholas was always cagey about his leg. He’d never seemed like much of a shorts guy to begin with, but if he ever had been he definitely wasn’t now. Static Man had only seen a glimpse of the leg once, by accident, while Nicholas was changing into pyjamas. A mess of poorly set broken bone, all jutting out beneath the skin at strange angles. He didn’t really talk about how it happened, which Static Man totally got. But then Chris mentioned offhand once that it was because he pussied out of eating a raw goat heart during a ritual, which was kind of fucking hilarious for a guy who would go on to bludgeon his dad to death with an obsidian bust, and then he double got why Nicholas never talked about it.) 

Nicholas walks around the car and leans on the hood, eyes closed, face tilted up toward the unforgivingly hot sun. They’ve been outside for maybe half an hour eating burgers from the latest upstanding Moody’s Family Friendly Whatever-The-Fuck, and Nicholas already has the makings of a sunburn on his cheekbones and the tips of his ears. Static Man finds himself jealous of him for it. It’s the little things you miss, he supposes. 

_ US Route 50, the loneliest highway in America _

Nicholas is, by most conceivable definitions, an asshole. Nicholas calls Static Man by the wrong name on purpose just because he knows it’ll rattle him enough to turn whatever argument they’re having in his favor. Nicholas is calculating and stubborn and pretentious. Nicholas is too much his father’s son, domineering and painfully aware of his own power. Nicholas is petulant and bitchy and ridiculously pedantic. 

Nicholas is lonely. Nicholas is a furious, exhausted man. A different wasteland every day. 

Nicholas is under his protection. Nicholas doesn’t need his protection anymore, so he must be keeping him around for another reason. 

Nicholas is perpetually sunburnt after days of driving through the Blacktop and Nicholas hasn’t gotten a haircut in way too long and Nicholas has the world’s shittiest mustache, but if Static Man’s not careful, the first thing he’s going to do when he has a body again is try to make out with him. 

Then again, maybe Static Man is just desperate. Maybe he’ll take anything Nicholas is willing to give. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’ll do when this is all over. Maybe he looks at Nicholas and he wants to be anything other than teeth. 

“Ready to keep going?” Nicholas asks, ineffectually wiping at the sweat on his forehead. Despite living most of his life in New York City, he never quite figured out how to cope with heat. 

“Yep,” Static Man says. “Whenever you’re ready, man.” The two-way road turned into a one-way hours ago. Wherever they’re going, he’s not entirely sure there’s a way back now. He thinks maybe there wasn’t a way back to begin with.

They get back in the car. They keep driving.

The sunset lasts for hours that night.  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, i hope you enjoyed this totally self-indulgent little thing! one day. one day these men will be doing more than pining. if you'd like, you can find me on tumblr @naverlee, and comments/kudos are really appreciated! thank you again for reading!


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